The Never List (The Golden Boys)

Madelaine Brown is a romance expert in every way that doesn't involve actually falling in love herself.

She's read every trope, analyzed every meet-cute, and can predict a happily-ever-after from the first chapter — but real-life love? That's been firmly crossed off her list since she was nine years old and her mother walked out the door without looking back. Admiring romance from a safe, theoretical distance has worked perfectly fine for her, thank you very much.

The problem is Jake West has never once respected her boundaries.

They've been colliding since childhood — babysat together, endured the same summers (mostly arguing), survived the same school, even landed in the same classes. He's everything Madelaine has carefully documented as dangerous: reckless in ways that somehow never backfire on him, effortlessly charming in ways she absolutely cannot explain, and annoyingly, inexplicably popular. He's been her most consistent source of irritation for as long as she can remember.

So when circumstances conspire to throw them into a fake-dating arrangement, Madelaine tells herself this is purely strategic. She knows every romance trope in existence — she can handle a little manufactured tension with her lifelong nemesis. No feelings. No complications. That's what's on her list.

But Jake has always had a talent for making her rethink everything she thought she knew.

This witty, warm romantic comedy proves that the rules we make for ourselves are no match for the wrong person at exactly the right time.